With his trip to Beijing this week, David Cameron hopes to reheat relations
with China after 18 months in the diplomatic deep freeze, writes author Mark
Leonard

China broke off friendly relations after the Prime Minister met the Dalai Lama last year, a move Beijing’s foreign ministry claimed “hurt the feelings of the Chinese people”.

Mr Cameron hopes to build on his record of thawing frosty relations with charm. As opposition leader, he upset Angela Merkel so much with his pledge to pull Tory MEPs out of the centre-Right EPP grouping that she refused to meet him. But when he had his first heart to heart with her as Prime Minister, he talked her round, triumphantly texting an aide: “I think I’ve pulled.”

Will he prove equally irresistible to his Chinese counterparts? And why is Mr Cameron, who has previously shown little interest in China, making such a big effort?

His trip is a belated recognition of the rise of Beijing. China has the world’s second biggest economy, and is the leading trading partner of 128 countries, the biggest holder of foreign currency reserves, the world’s biggest polluter, the biggest consumer of Middle Eastern oil and gas, the country with the fastest growing defence budget and the biggest contributor to UN peacekeeping missions among the veto-yielding members of the Security Council.

But what makes China so important is what it might become. A study by some of the country’s leading economists last year argued that by 2030, its economy could grow to twice the size of America’s. Beijing is also developing a more assertive foreign policy that will affect our interests on everything from Iran and Syria to climate change.

In launching his charm offensive, Mr Cameron is trying to get in on the action: selling into the biggest market in the world, luring Chinese investors to Britain and making the City of London into an offshore financial centre for the renminbi. In wooing Beijing, he is also following in the footsteps of Mrs Merkel, who last year boasted of having built a “special relationship” with China.

Team Cameron talks about borrowing from German tactics to build a different kind of relationship. He is bringing a delegation with him that includes half of the Cabinet, enough captains of industry to fill a football pitch and several recognisable faces (from the Royal Shakespeare Company and Downton Abbey).

It is unlikely Mr Cameron will reach the same levels of intimacy with the Chinese as Mrs Merkel, whose economy exports almost as much to China as the rest of the European Union combined. There is an almost perfect symbiosis between German technology and the needs of China. That has not been true of Britain — in January, a Foreign Office study reported that Britain’s share of the Chinese market had fallen to 1 per cent.

Mr Cameron and his team are trying to turn that around. "They are stressing that they want to build a long-term relationship with Chinese President who will be in power for the next decade, and are willing to show respect while avoiding dwelling on more sensitive subjects in public."

Last month, Mr Cameron sent George Osborne and Boris Johnson to clear the way. They dialled down the rhetoric on human rights and declared that the Prime Minister had no plans to meet the Dalai Lama again. They also announced measures to make it easier for Chinese tourists and businessmen to get British visas, a relaxation of rules for banks, and opened the door to investors taking majority stakes in future nuclear plants.

A lot of thought has gone into considering about how Britain can benefit from a change in the structure of the Chinese economy as it shifts from export-driven growth to domestic demand. That is why the delegation will include experts on urbanisation (tens of millions will move from the countryside to the cities in the next decade); health care (China will grow old before it is rich); and financial services (as China makes baby steps towards trading its currency in global markets).

Mr Cameron’s focus on China is right and overdue, but it is important that he does not shy away from difficult issues. For Beijing, weakness is often an invitation for aggression. American presidents routinely meet the Dalai Lama without meaningful punishment, while Europeans have often been bullied into submission. What is more, China’s bark is often worse than its bite: as Mrs Merkel met the Dalai Lama, Germany was exporting more goods to China than ever before.

As Mr Cameron builds a relationship with a country that could one day be as important to Britain as the United States, he should think about more than selling widgets. European countries would be better off taking a common stance on issues from the Dalai Lama to market access, and standing up for each other to Chinese pressure.

It is good for Mr Cameron to show the Chinese that we are open for business, but he ought not to give the impression that Britain is for sale.

Mark Leonard is director of the European Council on Foreign Relations and author of What Does China Think?